


if the fates allow

by hudders-and-hiddles (LeslieWrites)



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Childhood Friends, Christmas Party, Friends to Lovers, M/M, POV Alternating, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 10:28:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28349907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeslieWrites/pseuds/hudders-and-hiddles
Summary: Through the years, these two will be together.A lifetime of Christmas parties spent at the kids’ table.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 93
Kudos: 377





	if the fates allow

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU based on the movie _Love at the Christmas Table_ , which stars Dustin Milligan and Danica McKellar. I watched it and immediately started outlining this fic. And then I had the crazy idea that I would try to challenge myself to write the entire thing on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and now here we are 15k words later. You definitely do not have to have seen or even know anything about the movie to read this.
> 
> To help with the fact that this moves through quite a bit of time, if you read this on desktop, after the first two sections, you can hover over the section title to see how old Patrick and David are in that part.
> 
> Thanks to [Claire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cromarty/works), as always, for encouraging me to do the ridiculous things I decide I want to do and for being such a willing beta, even on Christmas. <3
> 
> Title is of course from “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” 
> 
> Happy holidays, y’all!

🎄 **_December 2014_ **🎄

This is it.

This is the year he and David are finally going to do things right. Patrick’s sure of it.

He’s meeting his parents before the party to ride over together, and he checks and double checks and triple checks that the ring box is still in the pocket of his blazer on his way there. Every time that his fingers brush against the velvet of it, he feels a little more confident. This is going to work. David is going to say yes.

🎄 **_December 1989_ **🎄

There are strangers everywhere, loud and laughing, and even though he can see his parents at the table in the next room, Patrick kind of wants to cry anyway. All the other kids at the table with him are older though, and he knows they’ll think he’s a baby if he starts to cry now—that’s what his cousin Jeffrey says every time he punches Patrick in the arm, and Jeffrey is seven, so he knows everything. Patrick is only four-and-a-half, but he’s much too old to be a baby. So he tries to eat his sandwich without putting up a fuss, and when he looks into the next room again and can’t see his parents at the table anymore, he doesn’t cry; he does the next most logical thing and slides down in his seat until he can crawl under the tablecloth and hide.

It’s an excellent plan, except…

“Your shoe is on my drawing!” says a boy beneath the table. A boy who isn’t Patrick.

He turns his chocolate-colored eyes toward Patrick, who settles with his legs folded beneath him, careful to rescue the drawing and slide it back across the floor to not-Patrick. The boy’s mouth is pinched in a pout that makes Patrick feel worse than any punch from Jeffrey ever has. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Why are you hiding?”

The boy sighs. “Parties are stupid. And loud. And Mommy says I can’t sit at the grown-ups table even though I’m six-and-a-half now. Why are _you_ hiding?”

Patrick doesn’t want to tell this boy that he wanted to cry, so he says something else instead. “I don’t know anyone.”

The boy’s nod of agreement is solemn, like he understands exactly what Patrick means. And then he sticks out his hand, the way Patrick has sometimes seen Dad do when he meets someone new. It feels very grown-up when Patrick shakes his hand, and the boy says, “I’m David.”

“I’m Patrick.”

“Now you know someone.” David’s smile is bright, like the lights on the big Christmas tree Patrick saw when they first walked into this very fancy house. “Want to help me color?” 

“Okay.” 

David slides some of the pencils toward Patrick and scoots the coloring page so that it’s positioned more precisely between them. It’s a drawing of two kids holding hands, one of them already colored in black and grey, kind of like the clothes David is wearing. There’s a little bit of a shoe print on the corner where Patrick stepped on it, and he’s going to apologize again, when David picks up a pencil and hands it to him. “You should color his friend’s shirt.”

It’s blue, the same as the shirt Patrick’s wearing, and Patrick smiles.

🎄 **_December 1993_ **🎄

“I just think,” David says, and Patrick’s already nodding along in agreement with him, “that if they get to drink fancy hot chocolate, we should, too.”

He knows that they can’t have the same hot chocolate as the grown-ups. Adelina had explained to him and Alexis both that they are not, under any circumstances, to even go into the music room where the hot chocolate bar is. She said it will make them very sick if they drink it, and even though David isn’t sure he cares about that, he had promised Adelina he wouldn’t and he doesn’t like the sad faces she gives him when he breaks his promises to her.

It’s okay though because they can make their own. 

Or they could if only he could reach the box of hot cocoa packets in the pantry.

“I can do it,” Patrick says and plants one foot bravely on the lowest shelf, hoisting himself higher like a movie prince who climbs a castle tower to rescue a princess. He only has to go up one more shelf before he can reach the box, but fear tingles along David’s spine anyway. _What if he falls? What if he gets hurt?_ But Patrick tosses the box down to David and climbs quickly down again. When his feet are back on the ground where they belong, David lets out his breath in a big gust of relief. Patrick doesn’t seem to have been worried at all though. He just gives David a gap-toothed grin. “Can I have marshmallows in mine?”

🎄 **_December 1996_ **🎄

“Mom, when can we go home?”

She tuts at him the way she always does when he does something she doesn’t like. “Patrick, we just got here.” He rolls his eyes. Maybe he’ll have better luck with Dad. “Where’s David? I thought you’d be stuck to his side like someone glued you there.”

He mumbles something intentionally incoherent at her and stalks away, throwing himself down into a chair at the kids’ table with a huff. That’s the problem, isn’t it? David is his only real friend at these Christmas parties for Dad’s work. He knows some of the other kids’ names now—there’s Jenny and Adam and Katie, and David’s little sister Alexis is here, too, though she’s only eight and hanging out with her is so annoying—but David is supposed to be his friend, the one person who he knows he can have fun with at these stupid parties. Patrick had been looking forward to seeing him since the invitation had arrived sixteen days ago, and then David had barely even said _hi_ to him when he’d arrived. Instead he’s stretched out on the sofa in the sitting room, reading some boring book, the brand new silver rings on his fingers glinting like armor, impenetrable.

So far, Patrick has gone in there to ask him if he wants something to eat, if he wants something to drink, and if he wants to play a game on Patrick’s new Game Boy. Each time, David has given him a _no_ and a heavy sigh, like Patrick is annoying him the same way Alexis always does, and Patrick isn’t dumb. He can take a hint. 

If David doesn’t want to talk to him, he’ll just have to be his own company. Patrick stuffs his pockets with a handful of the candy on the table and goes back to the lady by the door to ask for his coat. She scrunches up her eyes at him, looking at him the way Mrs. Halloway does when he swears he’s been practicing between piano lessons, but finally she disappears into the door behind her and comes back with his coat, his mittens still strung through the sleeves. He thanks her and shrugs it on before slipping out the side door to the veranda where he and David sometimes hide from Alexis. Planting himself under one of the lights, he pulls out his Game Boy and turns it on.

Nothing happens.

He flips the switch off and back on again. And again. 

Still nothing. The batteries are dead.

Patrick groans loudly and lets his head thunk back against the side of the house. This is the worst Christmas party ever.

🎄 **_December 2000_ **🎄

The night is cold but clear, and they can see a hint of stars from where they’re leaning against the railing of the veranda. David breathes out a long, steady breath, lips rounded into an O, and watches the curls of foggy heat roll off into the darkness. 

Patrick has been quiet this year. He’s been quiet the last few years really but exceptionally so this year. He’d snuck into the kitchen with David for cocoa and now out here so that they could escape Alexis, but he’s different from the wide-eyed, eager boy that David first met under the kids’ table all those years ago. 

David’s different too though, he supposes, so maybe that’s just part of growing up.

Still David would be lying if he said he didn’t notice. It’s hard not to. Because it’s not just the longer silences and the smiles that get harder to coax out of him every year. He’s taller now, skinny but sturdy in a way that David notices himself noticing. His sweater pulls tight across his shoulders and biceps, probably from playing baseball, one of the few things David’s managed to get him to say more than two words about since he arrived. There’s also the faintest scattering of hair across the line of his jaw, and David’s fingers twitch with the urge to brush across it, to see if it scratches like his own stubble or if it’s soft like peach fuzz.

David isn’t unaware that he likes boys in the same way he likes girls. He isn’t unaware that Patrick is cute and that David maybe has a little bit of a crush on him. What he doesn’t know is how Patrick feels about him. Or anyone really. He never talks about crushes or girls, or boys for that matter, and David doesn’t have the first clue about whether Patrick could be into him.

“This is nice,” Patrick says out of nowhere, and David gives him a questioning look. But Patrick is staring out into the dark, focused on something far off in the distance, or maybe not focused on anything at all. “The quiet,” he clarifies eventually. “I like that I can be quiet with you.”

“Oh.” It casts the evening in a new light. Maybe the quiet isn’t some kind of punishment for something David’s done but is a reward all its own. His mouth tilts into a little smile, pleased with the idea that maybe he can be something for Patrick that no one else can. “I like it, too.”

Patrick finally turns to look at him, the whole of the fathomless night pooling in the depths of his eyes. It’s the kind of look that makes David feel unbearably exposed. That makes him want to do something reckless. He tells himself that’s why he leans in. 

Patrick’s breath draws in sharply just before David’s lips brush against his, a soft, fleeting touch, barely there before it’s gone again. He can feel his own lips curling up at the corners even before he peels his eyes open. When he does, Patrick is frozen in place, his eyes wide and stunned, his mouth open in a little O that would be funny if David’s heart wasn’t hammering against his ribs.

“Was that okay?” David squeaks out when the silence has gone on far too long. 

“I—” Patrick’s gaze is still distant, like he’s doing math in his head, all his focus turned inward until he finds the answer. Then it sharpens all at once. 

His face contorts into something pitiful and pained, and he runs.

He literally runs across the veranda, flings open the door, and flees inside. 

Long after the party ends, Adelina finds David still standing there against the railing, his eyes rimmed with burning red, chilled through to the bone.

🎄 _**December 2002**_ 🎄

“Oh. I didn’t realize—” Patrick’s feet and mouth both stumble to a stop at the sight of David sitting on the island in the kitchen, his legs swinging back and forth in the space where a barstool normally sits. He’s reading a book on… stained glass, it seems, when Patrick tilts his head to get a better look at the cover, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his all-black sweater and wrapped carefully around the edges of the book. The look he gives Patrick is cool and wary in a way it never used to be, though he’s just as terribly beautiful as ever. That night two years ago flashes through Patrick’s mind, the soft, terrifying brush of his lips, the confusion and fear that had followed. 

He’d known before then that David sometimes kisses boys. He’d just never expected to be one of them. It’s not his fault that he hadn’t known how to react. Before the first time he’d kissed Rachel in the back row at the movies, he’d practiced. A lot. On his hand. His arm. One of his old teddy bears when his parents weren’t home. And when he’d finally kissed her, it had felt much the same as all those practice kisses had, and he’d been relieved at the familiarity of it. 

But David.

David had kissed him unexpectedly, and Patrick has told himself every day since then that it’s the lack of practice that made him feel so itchy and hot. No one likes to be surprised, especially not Patrick. He likes routine. He likes to know what to expect. He likes to _be_ what people expect. And it’s hard to do any of that when the beautiful boy you see once a year suddenly kisses you in the moonlight.

They stare at each other long enough that Patrick feels the need to break the silence. “So… how are you? How’s college?”

“Why are you talking to me?” David asks, and Patrick would be more offended if he couldn’t hear the hurt underneath it. “We’re not friends. You don’t even like me.”

“What?”

“You didn’t even come last year after—” A sweatered hand flaps vaguely in what Patrick supposes is some approximation of _I kissed you and you literally ran away._ And okay, yes, maybe he can see why that might look like he doesn’t like David. But it’s so far from the truth that Patrick nearly laughs. This night is the highlight of his year, every year. Ever since at five years old he’d walked into the house and found David waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. He’d grabbed Patrick by the hand and dragged him straight under the table where he’d hidden not only colored pencils but also a plate of cookies and a stash of juice boxes and a couple of blankets in case they got sleepy before the party was over. Sometimes Patrick thinks that David might be his best friend, even though they only see each other for approximately five hours a year. 

“I was at dinner with Rachel’s family last year. I tried to get out of it when we got your dad’s invitation, but my mom says when you make commitments you have to stick to them.”

“Who’s Rachel?”

“My girlfriend. Or she was, I guess.”

“‘Was’?”

“Yeah, we, um, we broke up last month.”

David closes his book, his look softening into something he wears less comfortably. “I’m sorry.”

Patrick just shrugs. She’d been complaining that he didn’t spend enough time with her, but between his AP courses and cross country and rehearsals for _Oklahoma_ and the open mic night he and some friends have been trying to plan, he didn’t have any more time to give her. Now though she can find someone who can make her happy better than he could.

“You know the best cure for a break-up?” David asks.

There’d been a whole rant about it, back when he was thirteen or fourteen and David had just been dumped by a girl who said he was too clingy. Patrick hadn’t really known anything about break-ups then, but David is two years older and had already been through several, so Patrick trusted he knew what he was talking about. “Ice cream and romcoms?” 

David’s smile is a small, secret thing, and Patrick feels strangely proud to have teased it out of him. “You grab the spoons.”

They disappear into the screening room with a couple pints of Häagen-Dazs and a mountain of soft, knitted blankets from the linen closet. Once they’re buried under them and cozy, and some cheesy holiday romance is unfolding on the big screen, Patrick says the thing he’s wanted to say for the last 728 days. “I’m sorry for, uh, running away. I was just… surprised… and—”

“It’s fine,” David says so casually that Patrick thinks maybe it’s something he’s been practicing, too. “You weren’t the first, and I’m sure you won’t be the last.”

Patrick’s heart breaks a little at the thought of people running away from David, at the memory of being one of them. “I still shouldn’t have done it. I should have stayed. We should have talked about it.”

That’s something Rachel had said, too. That he needs to talk more. But it isn’t easy, and Patrick can never quite figure out how to begin. Thankfully, David lets him off the hook this time.

“There’s nothing to talk about, Patrick. It’s fine, really.” He waves toward the screen. “Now shush. She’s about to spill coffee on the love of her life.”

It feels a bit like forgiveness, and Patrick lets it go, laughing with David long into the night at all the most ridiculous parts of successively more ridiculous movies. 

And when his dad comes to wake him later, their fingertips are only millimeters apart, like they’d been reaching for each other in their sleep.

🎄 _**December 2003**_ 🎄

David doesn’t watch Patrick’s lips wrap around the joint as he takes a drag. Doesn’t watch him blow the smoke out again, the wisps of it curling up into the night sky. 

It’s unseasonably warm this year, and it had seemed like a good idea to sneak out into the far depths of the yard, lay out a blanket, and smoke away another year’s worries. But all David can focus on is the heat of Patrick’s body beside him, their shoulders brushing together lazy and careless, like it doesn’t mean anything, like it doesn’t send a shower of sparks cascading through his belly every time Patrick shakes with laughter.

David knows well enough by now that this crush is never going to amount to anything, and even though it isn’t the aching flame of want that it once was, he still can’t seem to stomp out the remaining embers of it. So he does his best to ignore the way his fingers tingle when Patrick passes the joint back again and takes another hit.

“Dream job?” Patrick asks, picking up the threads of a question and answer game they’ve been playing on-and-off for the last 10 years.

“Who dreams of having a job?” he asks because he knows it will make Patrick laugh again. He does, his shoulder quivering with it against David’s, and he both savors and curses the golden fireworks shimmering to life beneath his skin.

“Sorry, not all of us have multi-million dollar trust funds to live off of.” 

“Marry rich and that’s not a problem either.”

He can practically feel Patrick’s grimace. “I’ll get right on that.”

They lapse back into silence for a while. David pretends to be looking at the stars—he used to know a few constellations when he was younger—but keeps throwing little sideways glances at Patrick’s unmoving profile beside him.

“I’ve always kinda thought I’d run a business,” he says eventually, giving up on trying to remember whether Cassiopeia is the one that looks like a _W_. “Take after my dad, I guess.” 

“What kind of business?”

“Definitely not video stores,” he replies and Patrick laughs again, setting off more fireworks. Even Dad has been thinking about selling off the last remaining family-owned stores lately, though David would never say that to Patrick, not knowing if it means his father would be out of a job. He doesn’t work for Rose Video directly, so maybe he’d be okay, but David doesn’t want to risk it anyway.

“Maybe I could help,” Patrick says, just like that. Like it’s easy. “We’ll be just like our parents. You can even throw annual employee Christmas parties and force a whole other generation of kids to be miserable every year.”

“Yeah, I definitely won’t be doing any of that.” He tries to leave it at that, but the rest of it keeps niggling at him until the words slip right out unbidden. “Are you really miserable every year?”

“No,” Patrick says immediately. But he doesn’t follow it up with anything else, and when David rolls on his side to face him, he’s chewing on his lip, apparently giving it a second thought. “No,” he says again, finally, shifting to look up at David looming over him. “I think this might actually be the only night of the year when I’m not.” 

David wants to ask him a million questions in return. Patrick just seems so put-together, like he knows what he wants and knows how to get it, and David can’t imagine being that certain about everything and still being miserable. Or maybe it’s just that he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to imagine that if he actually got his life together, he might still be just as lonely and unhappy as he is right now. At least right now his misery is of his own making, and there’s hope that maybe someday he can make something else for himself instead.

He only realizes then how close they are, the closest they’ve been since the night that David kissed him, and he rolls back down onto his back before he can do something stupid like kiss him again. “A store,” he says. “That sells handmade, luxury goods.”

“Expensive things,” Patrick teases.

“Exclusive things,” David corrects.

His answering laugh smooths out into something more sincere. “Mm, you’d be good at that.” 

“You think so?” David’s parents tell him all the time that he can do whatever he wants, but they’ve never once said they think he’d actually be successful.

Patrick reaches over and squeezes his hand, fingers brushing against his palm for just a moment before they’re gone again. “Of course I do.”

🎄 _**December 2004**_ 🎄

“What the hell are you doing?” Gretchen demands, and David freezes with a hand around the collar of Patrick’s shirt, the other packed full of fresh snow. Normally this isn’t the kind of thing he’d be caught dead doing, but Patrick always seems to have a way of getting him to do things outside his comfort zone. 

David refuses to be embarrassed about that in his own home, or rather on the back lawn of it, but his body is having a hard time getting the memo. He can feel the flush rising in his cheeks and the tightness ratcheting up his shoulders.

It’s Patrick who finally answers her. “We’re having a snowball fight. You’re welcome to join us.”

She rolls her eyes dramatically, and god, Alexis is right, it is frighteningly like dating himself sometimes. “You are _such_ a child. I’m going home.”

“No, Gretchen, wait!” He drops the snow back on the ground and lets Patrick go, chasing after the sound of her Prada booties as they echo back down the hall.

🎄 _**December 2006**_ 🎄

There are far too many forks and spoons on the table—and glasses, who needs this many glasses—and Patrick is vaguely uncomfortable at the sight of them all. All the years he’d spent in the other room, looking at his parents and everyone else gathered around the massive dining room table, he’d thought once he finally made it here, he’d feel like a proper adult. Instead he just feels even more out of his depth than he had the first time he’d walked into this house. 

The only relief is that David is here, too, seated across from him, thanks to a last minute cancellation from Dad’s boss, Eli, and his wife. Still, he definitely preferred bumping knees at the kids’ table to the vast gulf of dinnerware and centerpieces and small talk that separates them now.

He grins and bears it because that’s what Brewers do and because he knows, as his parents have repeatedly reminded him for the last two weeks, that networking with others at both the accounting firm where his father works and Rose Video can only be good for his post-college prospects. So he makes polite, inoffensive conversation with everyone in earshot and ignores the way David keeps kicking at his shoes.

🎄 _**December 2007**_ 🎄

“So,” Dad says, handing him an open beer as he comes to lean against the railing beside him, “how long were you going to wait to tell us?”

Patrick does his best not to sigh. “I haven’t made a decision yet.”

“It’s a promotion, Patrick. What is there to decide?”

This is precisely why he didn’t tell them. “This was supposed to be a foot in the door, and now they want to make me an analyst.” He takes a long swig of the beer, picking at the corner of the label as he builds up the courage to say what he’s been thinking. “I just don’t know if I want to work at the bank forever.”

“What else would you do?”

“I don’t know.” 

The map of New York City on his desk at home, the apartment rental and job searches in his internet history, and the spreadsheet on his desktop showing exactly how far each and every one is from David’s gallery, those tell a different story. 

“So what, you… quit? While you figure out where else you _might_ want to work?” There’s disappointment mixed with the frustration in his father’s voice. It’s a combination that’s always made Patrick feel guilty—guilty for not pleasing his parents, guilty for not being happy with what he already has, guilty for even considering wanting more—and sure enough, the feeling of it wells up in his chest as certain as the tides. 

“I know it’s not the responsible choice, Dad. I just…” _Want to be irresponsible sometimes. Want to find something that makes me happy instead of numb. Want to be passionate about something, like David with his gallery._ He shakes the thoughts away. “I just want to take the time to think about it. The pros and cons, you know, the way you taught me.”

It’s maybe a little bit manipulative, using his dad’s own words to get him off his back, but it gets the job done. “Okay.” He claps Patrick on the back. “Just don’t take too long to decide or they might offer it to someone else instead.”

If only. 

It would be nice if someone would just take the choice out of his hands. 

Actually, maybe someone can.

David’s face blossoms into a smile when he looks up from the kids’ table to find Patrick walking toward him. “Where have you been? I had to play three rounds of dream life with someone’s three-year-old, and believe me, the world is _not_ ready for that amount of cotton candy.”

“Can we talk, somewhere?”

“Um, sure.” David leads him upstairs and into a room in a back corner of the house, shutting the door behind them. Where the rest of the house is gilded and opulent, monied in an obvious kind of way, this room feels more like a museum, sparse but sculptural and richly textured, and Patrick is kind of afraid to even sit on the bed when David offers lest he mess up the aesthetic. Instead, he paces while David sits watching him cross back and forth across the room. “What is going on with you?”

“What if I came to New York?” Patrick asks before he can think of a more delicate way to lead into the discussion.

“What?”

“They offered me a promotion at work.”

David shakes his head, not following. “In New York?”

“Not exactly.”

That expressive face twists into a moue of displeasure. “New Jersey?”

“No, no, it’s still here, but.” Patrick presses a thumb into his palm, trying to rub some of the tension from his hands. “What if I came to New York anyway?”

“I don’t understand.”

Patrick sits down, careful not to rumple the comforter too much under David’s wary gaze. “I don’t know if I want the promotion.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t think I want to work at the bank for the rest of my life, and this just feels… binding. I know I _can_ leave, but it feels like if I choose to stay, it’s just going to get easier and easier to keep doing that forever.”

“Yeah,” David says cautiously. “I guess I get that.” His fingers pluck at a piece of lint Patrick can’t see. “So why New York then?”

 _You’re there._

Except Patrick can’t just say that. He can’t say _I’m sorry I ran away when you kissed me seven years ago, but I’m really starting to think that maybe I’d like you to try it again._ He can’t say _the only place where I’ve ever felt like I could be me is wherever you are._

He can’t say that directly, but maybe if he thinks it hard enough, David will hear him anyway. “It just seems like a good place to try something new.”

David’s face goes carefully blank, his spine stiffening as he sits up taller. “You should take the promotion.”

“What?”

“Take the job, Patrick.”

He’s off the bed and reaching for the door handle before Patrick can catch up to what’s happening, reaching out to catch David’s arm. “Why? I thought that—”

“I know what you thought,” David says, and Patrick had thought maybe he was angry somehow, but instead he just sounds… resigned. “I’ve been a pit stop for a lot of people trying to figure out what they want. Please don’t make me be that for you.”

And then he’s gone, leaving Patrick grasping for nothing but empty air. 

🎄 _**December 2008**_ 🎄

“Oh my god, _stop_ , David.”

“Stop what?” He rolls his eyes at his nuisance of a sister.

“Every time the door opens and it isn’t Patrick, you look like someone kicked your Mercedes.”

“If you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to kick _you_.”

“Ugh, his mom already said he isn’t coming, and I am not going to let you spend Christmas moping around the house like this.”

He turns toward the kitchen, but her Miu Miu pumps clack across the tile behind him like the world’s most annoying shadow, catching up to him before he can even make it out of the foyer. She tugs at the sleeve of his sweater, and he wrests his arm back before she can stretch it out. ”This is cashmere, Alexis! And it’s not even Christmas.”

She pouts an apology his way for a whole two seconds before her face morphs back into something more gleeful. “Oh, whatever, David, come on. Klair’s having a party, and I heard that Canyon is back in town.” The wink she gives him is the least subtle thing he’s ever seen, and that includes the time their mother had hinted at wanting a birthday trip to Santorini by singing the entirety of the _Grease_ songbook for a week straight.

“Canyon with a C or a K?”

“Ummmm, C, I think? No, K. No, wait, which one lost his Ferrari in that poker game with Jason Mraz?”

The door behind her opens again, and without his permission, David’s gaze drifts over to it. And once again, it’s not Patrick who steps inside. 

“You know what, it doesn’t matter. Let’s go before I change my mind.”

“Ooh, yay, David, yay!”

🎄 _**December 2010**_ 🎄

She’s gorgeous.

Of course, she’s gorgeous. With the kind of smile that just radiates warmth and sincerity and good humor and kindness and basically every single thing that David isn’t, all wrapped up in one pretty, petite little package. He wants so badly to hate her, but the only thing he actually hates is the ring on her finger.

“So, Rachel, when did you two…” He gestures vaguely at her hand across the kids’ table, and her smile brightens even more.

“Oh, Patrick proposed last week, on my birthday.” She turns to give him a fond, sparkling look that he returns. “He brought me breakfast in bed, all fancy with a silver cloche, like I was getting room service or something. But instead of the pancakes I was promised, there was a ring box.” Even her laugh is breathy and inviting, and when she presses a kiss to Patrick’s cheek, David pinches his own leg to ground himself. “Never did get those pancakes though.”

“Sounds like you owe her,” he manages to tease before pushing back in his chair. “Will you excuse me for a moment?”

It’s his own fault. He’s the one who’d told Patrick to stay. He’s the one who’d said to take the promotion that meant he could afford a ring like that, that meant staying at home near the girl he’s loved since they were teenagers. Patrick had wanted to come to New York, and David had been too afraid it wouldn’t work to even let him try. 

He’s working on his third glass of champagne before Patrick finds him.

“Congrats, by the way.” He pastes on his winningest smile. “I don’t think I managed to say that in the whirlwind when you first arrived.”

“Thanks.”

David wonders if there’s any part of him that still thinks about New York—about David—but he’s just smart enough not to say so. 

Instead he says something worse. “So. You think it’s going to stick this time?”

Patrick blanches. “What?”

“I just mean, you’ve been off-and-on a lot over the years. What made you finally decide that this time it’s, like, on forever?” It’s the alcohol, he thinks, that makes him reckless. Or maybe just the shame of knowing that he’s the cause of his own misery, once again. 

“Jesus. You’re one to talk.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“How long has your longest relationship been, David? What, three months?”

“That’s not fair!” Hot tears well to the surface at the low blow, even if he knows deep down that he deserves it. “We’re not talking about me.”

Patrick shakes his head, and David wants him to yell, to fight. Instead he looks David square in the eye and says, as calm as ever, “Aren’t we though?”

It cuts him off at the knees, and it takes everything in him to keep standing. 

He can’t cry. Not here. So he musters all of his strength, sets his half-empty glass on the tray beside the bar, and walks steadily from the room. 

Halfway to the front door, he runs into Rachel. “Have you seen Patrick?”

“Um, yeah, he’s”—he clears his throat—”he’s back in the music room. Third door on the right.”

She looks at him more closely, and he tries not to flinch. “Are you okay?”

 _Why does she have to be nice?_ “Fine, yeah,” he croaks out. “Just need some air.” He pushes past her but turns around again after only a few steps. “Rachel.”

“Yeah?”

“I hope you make each other really happy.”

Her smile feels like a hug, wrapping around him with a care and familiarity he doesn’t deserve. “Me, too.”

🎄 _**December 2011**_ 🎄

“Did that plate personally maul your sweater closet, or… ?” Patrick slides into the seat across from David at the kids’ table—well, it’s mostly the twentysomethings’ table these days, but that doesn’t have quite the same ring—giving him a perfect view of the shock on David’s face and the smile that follows right behind it.

“Patrick? Wha— Clint said you were spending the week with Rachel and her family in Montreal.” 

Patrick shrugs. “I pushed my flight back a couple days. Didn’t want to miss all this.”

After how things had gone last year, he wasn’t actually sure he’d be welcome, but David looks at him the way he always has, making Patrick feel as warm as he always does. It’s a nice change of pace. He’s been second-guessing a lot of his decisions lately, this one included, but now that he’s here, he’s certain that he’s made the right choice this time.

David’s gaze catches on something across the room, or rather _someone_ Patrick discovers when he glances over his shoulder, morphing back into the mutinous glare he’d been wearing when Patrick had arrived. “A friend of yours?”

There’s a bitter laugh and more glaring. “An ex, actually.” He finally turns back to Patrick, grimacing. “Apparently my mother heard that Maria and Arnold are having all of their parties photographed this year and had to get in on the trend.” That explains the camera then, though Patrick thinks the guy would probably be more successful if he were actually using it rather than showing it off to the waifish woman he’s managed to corner.

“Does she know that he’s your ex?”

“You’ve met my mother, right? You think she’s going to let a minor inconvenience like that stop her from getting what she wants?”

“Well,” Patrick says, “I suppose there’s only one thing to do then.” He meets David’s questioning look with a smirk and then vanishes beneath the table. A moment later, David joins him, giggling, their knees bumping together. Patrick shushes him, peeking back out to snatch up the candy from the centerpiece and their drinks to drag back down with him. If only he had some coloring pages, it would be just like when they were kids again. It had been a lot roomier under here back then, but it’s kind of cozy, too, in its own, weird way. 

“So we’re just gonna hide under here all night?”

“Well, at some point I will have to refill our drinks at least, but for now…” Patrick tilts his head back and forth, considering. “Dream vacation, go.”

“Oooh, hmmm. Well, as much as you know I love Canadian winters”—he laughs sarcastically—“Christmas in Paris is pretty wonderful. We did that one year, stayed at the Ritz, Alexis and I piled into Mom and Dad’s bed in the morning and ordered literally everything from room service.”

Patrick smiles at the way the warmth of the memory glows under David’s skin. “How old were you?”

“Eleven, I think?” He frowns as he thinks about it, then frowns more. “I think that’s the last time we were all together on Christmas morning.” 

Sometimes Patrick forgets just how much unhappiness is hidden under the drapings of these Christmas parties, but peek under a tablecloth and it pops right up. He gives David’s arm a squeeze, and David shakes himself from his melancholy. 

“Anyway, they had this, like, saltless butter that was to die for. I would eat my bodyweight in that, with fresh croissants. And this is dream vacation, so then I’d get a massage from that resto-lounge Alexis and I went to in Thailand. Oh, and dinner would be the goat cheese and fennel tortellini we had in Bologna. Champagne truffles from Lausanne...”

“Basically, what I’m getting is a lot of food and a massage.” Patrick buries his grin behind his hand.

“And Paris!”

“Oh, of course, how could I forget Paris with all the sightseeing that you mentioned?”

“Okay.” David takes a pointed sip of his martini. “Your turn then. Dream wedding, go.”

Patrick’s grin grows so brittle it could shatter. “Oh, um, I don’t know.” Suddenly, he regrets starting this game. Not just now but ever. He should have somehow foreseen that one day it would lead to this. Maybe not this exactly, but something uncomfortable either way. But he hadn’t been thinking quite that far ahead when he’d found David sulking in the hall nearly twenty years ago, upset about some Christmas gift he wasn’t going to get. Patrick had asked him about his dream Christmas then, not realizing he’d set into motion the chain of events that would lead him here someday.

“Nope, you know the rules. There are no ‘I don’t know’s in dream life.”

He swallows heavily. “No, I know, it’s just…” God, he doesn’t want to explain this. Especially to David. His heart starts to race at the mere thought, and he takes another sip of his beer to buy himself some time. Maybe if he buys himself enough, David will let him off the hook.

Patrick’s never had that kind of luck though. “‘It’s just...’?”

He opens his mouth. But instead of words coming out, a horrible, shaking breath goes in. It doesn’t do anything to calm the panic clawing at his throat though, and he tries to suck in another and another, the air never quite reaching his lungs.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” There’s a hand against his back then, a grounding warmth through the thin fabric of his shirt, and he does his best to focus on the steady feeling of it rubbing gentle circles between his shoulder blades. “Breathe, Patrick. In… And out… In again… And out…”

He doesn’t know how long they sit like that, with David talking him through a panic attack, but eventually Patrick manages to unclench his jaw, exhaustion surging through his body in the wake of the tremors, and he sags backwards onto the tile.

David lies down carefully next to him. This table was certainly not made for two grown men to lie under, but they make it work somehow. “So do you want to talk about what just happened? Or should we pretend that—”

“I don’t think I want to get married.”

“Oh, ok. Um. Like, ever? Or just— just right now? Or?”

Patrick doesn’t think he can parse out the exact answer to that in this state, so he just barrels on through it. “I proposed to her. I thought it’s what I wanted. It’s what _she_ wanted, but— God, David, I’m such an asshole. I asked her to _marry_ me. Told her I wanted to spend my life with her, and every time she tries to set a date or pick a venue o-or look at invitations, I just— I can’t do it. I can’t.”

“It’s okay. You’re okay,” David soothes in gentle tones, like he’s trying not to spook a wild horse. “You don’t have to rush into anything. Maybe you just need—”

“More time?” Patrick’s laugh is bitter and broken. “We’ve been dating for the better part of the last twelve years. I’m pretty sure I’ve had all the time I’m allowed.” He swipes angrily at the tears building in the corners of his eyes, brushing them away before they can fall. “She deserves someone better than me.”

“Well, that’s not possible.” He turns to find David giving him the saddest smile he’s ever seen. “You’re the best person I know.”

Patrick shakes his head because that can’t possibly be true.

“You are,” David insists. “But… Maybe you should tell her. How you feel.”

“Yeah,” Patrick sighs. “Yeah, probably.” He can do that. He’ll talk to her. After the holidays. There’s no point in ruining Christmas for her at least. “Since we’re already having a pity party,” he says, turning on his side to face David, “what’s the story with Nikon Hipster out there?”

“Oh, please, like he’d deign to use a Nikon.” He rolls his eyes, but there’s a hint of a laugh tucked into the corner of his mouth. “It’s the usual story, you know. Date for a few months. Find out all in one day that he’s been using you for your industry contacts, selling your calendar to the paparazzi, and sleeping with both your assistant and her boyfriend for the last month.”

“Wow, that’s…” Patrick isn’t sure what that is exactly. Awful, certainly, but he’s not sure there’s a word for just how much. “Do you want me to punch him?”

David’s barks out a surprised laugh. “Alexis already offered actually.”

“Oh, good. Because he’d probably kick my ass.”

“You mean these shoulders don’t come from some kind of superhero side gig?”

Patrick ignores the little thrill he gets at the idea of David noticing his shoulders. “No, they definitely do, but distressed sweaters that cost more than my car are actually my kryptonite, so I’m gonna sit this one out.”

David laughs, more than the joke warrants, but it’s full and bright, the kind Patrick comes to this party hoping to see every year, and it sets his stomach swooping. Once the laughter fades, there’s a smile left behind, a sweet twist of David’s mouth that only reminds Patrick of how soft those lips had once felt against his own. He wonders if they’d still feel the same.

“Refill?” he asks, before he can lean into the impulse, and David drains the rest of his martini before handing over his glass. “Okay, back in a few.” Patrick peeks his head out from under the tablecloth to check that the coast is clear, but David’s voice draws him back again.

“Hey, Patrick?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m really glad you came to the party this year.”

“I am, too.”

🎄 _**December 2012**_ 🎄

“I’ve still got a couple boxes I need to get from the apartment, but she said I could leave them there until I find a new place.”

“That’s nice of her.” David says, turning them toward the east end of the garden. It’s cold enough out that he can see his breath, but it’s nice to not have a nosy sister interrupting Patrick’s story. 

“Yeah. She’s— I don’t deserve it, but…” He shrugs. “That’s Rachel.”

They amble past the winterberries glazed with a thin, shining layer of ice and the hellebores not yet in bloom, letting the moonlight and the easy quiet wash over them for a while. When they reach the end of the path and turn north again, it starts to snow, perfect, fluffy little flakes that dance their way down to the ground. David watches one drift toward Patrick’s nose, realizing as it lands on his cheek instead that Patrick is shivering. He’s not wearing a coat, only a thin sweater doing seemingly little to ease the chill, but David’s in a long-sleeve shirt and a thick, wool knit under his own coat, so he unbuttons it without hesitating and wraps it over Patrick’s shoulders despite his protests.

“David, I know you run cold.”

“It’s fine,” he insists, though his teeth take the opportunity to punctuate the statement with a chatter, just a few tiny clacks as a breeze kicks up, giving him away. “I can survive a few minutes in just two layers.”

“No, come on, we can share,” Patrick says, sliding his hands into the coat’s pockets and holding it open in invitation. They have a bit of a silent standoff, but he pins David with a steely look until he finally acquiesces and steps into the shelter of Patrick’s body, two strong arms automatically wrapping around him to protect them both from the cold.

David has never been so aware of his own body before, his nerves lit up in every single place where they’re touching, arcing neon twisting around his arms, brushing against his thighs, branching out in electric trees across his chest. The sting of it makes him brave, or reckless maybe, and he says into the bubble of silence that surrounds them, “She called me, you know.”

He can feel the gust of Patrick’s stunned breath across his cheek. “What?”

“Yeah, um, maybe… three weeks ago now?” When it happened, David hadn’t been sure that he was going to tell Patrick about it, but he’s tired of waiting. He’s tired of tiptoeing around each other. He wants to push, to drag them both into this headfirst, and even if it means that in the end David is only self-immolating, so be it. Patrick Brewer will always be worth burning for.

“How did she even get your number?” Patrick asks.

“She called me from your phone. She’d been drinking, I think.” 

Patrick blanches but doesn’t pull away. Instead he wraps his arms tighter around David, as if he could protect him from whatever conversation he’s imagining took place. “Whatever she said, I’m sorry. I’m sure she was upset and—”

“She wished me luck, actually.” 

It’s hard then to meet Patrick’s gaze, but David makes himself do it anyway, watching the panic that flashes across his familiar face, red and clangorous. “Why would— Why—” David can feel the hitch of his breath where their chests are pressed together, maybe the too-fast beat of his heart, too, or perhaps that’s just David’s own, bouncing against Patrick’s ribs and back like an echo. “Why would she do that?”

His hands come up and around to splay across the small of Patrick’s back, fingers rubbing light circles into the sinfully soft fabric of his sweater. “Patrick,” he whispers, soft, coaxing. “You know why.”

There’s a second, barely more than a heartbeat, where he’s worried Patrick is going to run again, but before he can even start to lean across the distance between them, Patrick is surging toward him instead, lips cold but tongue hot, and David can’t help the relief he groans into Patrick’s mouth. It’s a kiss twenty-three years in the making, and it feels inevitable, like all the atoms in the universe arranged themselves precisely to make this moment possible.

It’s only one kiss, not nearly enough, especially when Patrick nips at his lower lip as he pulls away. It’s something they’ll need to revisit somewhere horizontal as soon as possible, and David says, “You know I have a perfectly comfortable bed inside.”

Patrick laughs, blushing and beautiful, with snow glittering in his hair. “As nice as that sounds, I think I might need to take this a little slower than that.” He presses a kiss to David’s cheek and another brief brush of one across his aching mouth, tempering the wave of disappointment threatening to crash over him. “For one thing, my parents are in there, and I think I probably need to have a conversation with them before I go sneaking off into a cute guy’s bedroom.”

Leave it to Patrick to be logical and careful when all David can think about is getting to know how they would feel pressed together like this with far less clothes in the way. But that’s the Patrick he knows and lo— likes. And he wouldn’t want him any other way. 

“I can do slow,” he says, leaning in again to show Patrick just how slow (and thorough) (and teasing) he can be.

🎄 _**December 2013**_ 🎄

David is all heat, his breath on Patrick’s neck, his cock in Patrick’s hand, his hands roving across the expanse of Patrick’s back, and Patrick could melt, just dissolve into nothingness, right here on David’s very expensive sheets.

“Fuck, like that,” David pants as Patrick strokes him more firmly, his fingers curling in to scratch softly at Patrick’s skin. They haven’t gotten nearly enough of these kinds of nights, stringing together a couple days at Patrick’s apartment in the spring, a holiday weekend in David’s loft in New York. It’s been mostly texts and phone calls—and a lot of phone sex—and Patrick wants to spend as much of the few weeks David is home for Christmas in bed as possible. 

He slips down and pulls David’s cock between his lips, savoring the grunt that punches out of him and the greedy slide of nimble fingers along his scalp as he tries his best not to thrust up into Patrick’s mouth.

“That’s so good, Patrick. God, you’re...”

“I’m what?” he pulls off to ask when David doesn’t go on, stroking him lightly and laughing at the high-pitched whine that wheezes out of him. 

“A menace,” David groans. “The worst. A danger to my—” Patrick tightens his grip, twisting a little on the upstroke the way David loves. “Oh, fuck, please. Please, please.”

His hand goes slack again, teasing, and David’s body curls off the bed as he lunges after the lost sensation. “A danger to your…?”

David presses his hands over his eyes, his chest heaving like he’s run a marathon. “I hate you.”

“You don’t.”

“I do.”

“You really don’t.” Patrick leans down and flicks his tongue against the slit, swipes it once around the thick, pink head. “A danger to your…?” he repeats.

“Fuck.” The word bursts out of David like a cork, and Patrick grins, getting his mouth around his boyfriend’s cock again as he starts to babble. “Health. Sanity. Everything. Everything. Just please. I’m so close. Please don’t stop. Please. I’m— Please, please, please, please.” His hips rock up to push himself between Patrick’s lips, and Patrick lets his mouth go slacker, softer, lets David take what he needs, getting a hand down on his own cock as the smell and taste and sound of David envelops him. As often as they’ve gotten each other off over the phone or even on FaceTime this past year, there’s nothing like this, the feeling of being surrounded by David, and by the time the rhythm of David’s hips falter and he comes hot and thick across the back of Patrick’s tongue, he’s close, too. 

He slides to his knees, bracketing David’s thighs, lets David get his uncoordinated, sex-lazy hands on him, brushing languid touches all across his hips, his belly, coaxing him on as he chases the heat sparking at the base of his spine. 

“Do you know how gorgeous you are like this?” All Patrick can manage in response is a broken moan, his hand moving faster as his head drops back between his shoulders and his eyes squeeze closed. “You’re gonna look so good,” David says, “ _so good_ riding my cock just like this later tonight.”

Patrick’s orgasm slams into him, pulls him apart as David’s hands try to hold him together as best they can. Patrick flops down on top of him, heedless of the mess, and licks slow, breathy kisses into his mouth as his heart tries to remember what speed it’s normally supposed to beat. 

“That was…” he manages eventually.

“Good?”

Patrick laughs, all wheezing air. “Do you have a dictionary?”

“What? Why?” David tries to sit up, but Patrick is still molded to his chest. He intends to stay that way for as long as possible.

“I need to check the definition of good. See if they changed it to, like, revelatory.”

A smile slides across David’s mouth. “I didn’t even really do anything,” he says, though he still preens a little, shimmying his shoulders at the compliment, and Patrick presses a kiss to his neck.

“David, you could just lie there, fully clothed, talking about the weather while I get myself off and this would still be the best sex I’ve ever had. Every time.”

It earns him an eye roll, but it’s the fond kind; Patrick’s seen enough of them over the years to know the difference. “Not every time, I’m sure.”

“Every. Time.” He punctuates it with kisses to make sure David knows how serious he is about it. About him. “I just wish we could do this more often.”

“Me, too.”

David pets absently at Patrick’s hair, and it coaxes a thought to the surface. It’s a thought he’s had a lot since they’d kissed each other goodbye a few days after the start of the new year. “What if we moved in together?”

“What?”

“I know it’s a big step, but… we keep saying we want to see each other more.” 

“Ummm.” David pushes at his shoulders until Patrick rolls off of him. “Sorry. This just— This feels like a clothes on kind of conversation.” He crawls out of his bed and gathers his clothes from where they’d left them neatly stacked on the dresser. “I’m gonna…” And he disappears into the bathroom, leaving Patrick alone to breathe through the anxiety starting to bubble up in his stomach.

They trade places but not words when David’s done, and Patrick gives himself thirty seconds alone behind the locked door to freak out before he runs a washcloth over himself and pulls on his clothes. This whole… situation… doesn’t have to mean anything bad. It’s just an appreciation for the seriousness of the conversation. It’s a good thing, actually, that David wants to treat this with the gravity it deserves. He wouldn’t want them to make this choice flippantly and have it blow up in their faces just a few months down the road.

By the time he opens the door again, Patrick’s managed to talk himself out of the bulk of his panic, or at least tamp it back down into all the dark, damp places it usually grows. David’s waiting for him on the bed, as perfectly put together as ever, and he reaches out a hand for Patrick as soon as he sits down. It seems like a good sign, and the panic recedes a little more.

David brushes his thumb across Patrick’s wrist, a ghost of a touch, and when he finally opens his mouth, his voice is just as faint. “You’d really want that?”

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”

“It’s just that—” He turns Patrick’s hand over and traces the lines on his palm. “That’s a lot. Of me.”

“David.”

Patrick knows he can’t erase the people who have treated David like something to be used up and then thrown away, but god, he’d really love to try. He closes his hand around David’s fingers, giving them a squeeze. “I’m not going to get tired of you,” he says. “I want to be around you as much as I can.”

David finally meets his gaze. “You mean that.” It’s a statement, not a question, but Patrick replies anyway.

“I mean it, David. More than anything.” He seals it with a kiss, gentle but steady and long enough that he can feel David’s smile grow against his lips. It makes for a beautiful sight, too, when he finally pulls far enough away to see it. “I know it’ll take some time,” he says, “for you to get everything wrapped up in New York, but we’ve already made it a whole year. A month or two more won’t be the end of the world.”

David’s fingers slide from his grip. “Wait. What do you mean ‘wrapped up in New York’?”

“Well there’s your loft, and I don’t know what you want to do with the gallery—close it or sell it or… What?” 

David keeps moving away, not just his hand but his whole body slipping farther from Patrick’s reach, pulling in on itself. For someone who looms so large in Patrick’s life, he can make himself horribly small when he wants to. Patrick isn’t sure what he’s done to cause it, so he doesn’t know how to fix it.

“So in this plan,” David says somewhere in the direction of his cuticles, “I move back here.”

“Yeah,” Patrick replies, still uncertain where they’re missing each other. “I know that the closet situation at my place isn’t ideal, if that’s what you’re worried about, but we can put up some shelves in the second bedroom or something, and—”

“Mhmm. Mhmm.” David’s head shakes up and down in what looks like a nod but it just keeps going, wobbling around until David bounces himself right off the bed to pace a tight line across the floor. 

“Did I— Did I do something wrong here, David?”

He finally stops pacing to pin Patrick with a look full of far more anger than he could have expected. “So I just pack up my entire life for you. That’s what you want.”

“Well, how else are we going to live together? One of us has to—” It finally clicks, what the problem is. “Did you think I was going to come to New York?”

“Yes!” David throws up his hands in emphasis. “You tried to. Once before. You were desperate to get out of here.”

“That was six years ago now, and _you’re_ the one who told me to stay.” It had been awful, taking the promotion they’d offered, knowing that it was his only option when David didn’t seem to want him the way that Patrick wanted David. “I have a job here. I can’t just quit and—”

“Oh, and I can? Why, because I don’t have a real job?” He looks at Patrick expectantly, daringly, but Patrick isn’t stupid enough to take the bait. The difference between their careers isn’t real and not real. It’s that Patrick’s is tied to this place—if he’s going to do this job, he has to do it here—while David could run a gallery anywhere. It’s about which one of them can start over more easily, and money and a well-known family name will always put that ability into David’s hands.

“I know,” David says, “that no one takes me seriously. That everyone thinks I’m just playing gallerist with my dad’s money.” Patrick opens his mouth to protest, but David quells him with a flick of his hand. “But I _care_ about what I do, and I thought you understood that.”

“I do, but…” He searches for something, anything that will get David to stay, to see that the place they both belong is here, but it’s like trying to catch water with an open hand, all of it slipping right through his fingers. “It’s not even your dream job,” he tries, though he knows it’s the wrong thing to say as soon as it’s out of his mouth.

“And working at a bank is yours?” David wraps his arms around himself, a barrier between them that Patrick knows he’s not going to be able to break. “It’s just a game, Patrick. A stupid game two bored little boys made up to escape from a silly party. There’s no life where all the things we’ve dreamt up get to be true.”

“David—”

“You should go home.”

The words land like a slap across the face, and Patrick can feel himself reeling back, cheeks stinging and eyes wet at the impact. “I’m sorry,” he says, faltering, because he doesn’t know what other words he can say to fix this. “I’m sorry, David.”

“Me, too,” he says sadly, “but you should go.”

The finality of it falls between them like a gavel, and Patrick’s heart shatters with the blow.

🎄 _**December 2014**_ 🎄

This is it.

This is the year he and David are finally going to do things right. He’s sure of it.

It had taken almost thirteen years for Patrick to figure out that he didn’t actually want to marry Rachel. But with David, he’s always known he did. Well, maybe he didn’t quite know it at four-years-old, coloring with a new friend under a dinner table, but at some point it had just become a fact of life, long enough ago now that it feels like it’s always been a part of him. _My eyes are brown. I’m good at math. Someday I’m going to marry David Rose._

It’s what he should have said last year. _Marry me, and we’ll figure the rest out as we go._ He knows now that all that matters is that he and David are in the same place. And whether that’s in New York or Toronto or Evergreen Hollow or on the dark side of the damn moon, at least they’ll be together. Everything else is just details.

And tonight he’s going to make it happen. 

No, he and David haven’t spoken since last year’s party. David could hate him still. Or he could be with someone else. But it wouldn’t be a grand gesture if it wasn’t at least a little bit crazy.

He’s meeting his parents before the party to ride over together, and he checks and double checks and triple checks that the ring box is still in the pocket of his blazer on his way there. Every time that his fingers brush against the velvet of it, he feels a little more confident. This is going to work. David is going to say yes.

“Mom?” he calls out as he opens the front door. “Dad? Are you ready to go?” He wants to get there early this year, maybe plot with Alexis on how best to get David alone. His footsteps across the hardwood in the entryway mixes with the sound of the television, and he follows it into the living room.

“Oh, Patrick, it’s awful!” His mother turns beneath his father’s arm, two watery eyes meeting his, a trembling hand covering her trembling mouth.

“What’s wrong? What happened?”

 _The Roses_ someone on the television says, catching Patrick’s attention, and the blood drains from his face as the news footage cuts to a reporter standing on the immense front lawn of an opulent house he knows all too well, CRA agents filing out of the front door with their arms full of furniture and jewelry and art. There’s something about unpaid taxes and a crooked business manager and, oh god, that’s a photo of Dad’s boss, and Patrick is going to be sick. He can feel it burning in his throat as tears sting at his eyes.

“David,” he croaks, fumbling for his phone and punching at a number he hasn’t called in 364 days. 

But the line just rings and rings and rings.

🎄 _**December 2015**_ 🎄

When Patrick had finally managed to get an address for where the Roses had ended up after their involuntary departure and discovered that the online map didn’t even have a street view of it available, he expected that things would be bleak. Sitting in the parking lot staring at the Schitt’s Creek Motel in person, he thinks bleak seems pretty mild. It’s quite the fall from grace, and even though he knows it isn’t their fault, he still knows how embarrassed they all would be to be seen in this rundown roadside motel in a no-stoplight town in the middle of rural Ontario. 

It’s almost enough to make him turn right around and go back to Evergreen Hollow, but he didn’t drive five hours to not see David for another year.

He takes a deep breath, opens the car door, and steps out into the early evening air.

The woman in the office gives him an unwelcoming scowl as soon as he steps inside. “Office closed ten minutes ago. Sorry.”

He checks the time on his phone. “You close at 5:13 on the dot?”

“Yep. Plus we’re full up for the night anyway.”

“Really?” Patrick asks. “Because your ‘vacancy’ sign is still on, and there are… six keys still on the hanger behind you.”

“The ‘no’ on the sign burnt out years ago, and those rooms are being renovated.” She stares him down, but he played this game with David for enough years that he barely even twitches as he waits her out. Eventually, she sighs. “Fine, I just didn’t want to have to boot this stupid computer back up again. If you die of old age before I get the reservation system up, that’s on you.”

He smiles. He can’t help it. She reminds him of David. “Actually, I’m not looking for a room anyway. Well,” he corrects, “I’m looking for a room, but not for the night.”

“I don’t rent out rooms by the hour.”

“No.” Patrick chuckles. “No, that’s not— I’m looking for David Rose. I was told he lives here.”

Her gaze sharpens then, raking him down and up and down again. He wouldn’t be surprised to find scratches on his skin when she’s done. “Are you a reporter or something?” 

Whoever this woman is, Patrick loves her, just a little bit. Like him, she clearly knows that David is someone worth protecting. “No,” he says. “I’m an old friend.”

To her credit, she doesn’t budge. “I don’t give out the room numbers of our guests without their permission. Even for old friends.”

It’s not like he hadn’t expected that possibility. There are only four room keys missing—rooms two, four, six, and seven—and he could go knocking door-to-door until he finds the right one. Or… 

“You could ask him. If he wants to see me.” 

Patrick had been looking forward to knocking on David’s door himself, getting a chance to read whatever he might see there before David inevitably gets his beautiful, expressive face back under control. But maybe this is better, for David if not for him. He can decide whether or not he wants to see Patrick. He can decide what to do with the knowledge that Patrick drove all this way just for him. He can choose. 

It’s something Patrick hadn’t really let him do the last time.

The woman behind the desk is still wary, but she picks up the phone anyway. “What’s your name?” she asks before she dials.

“Patrick. Brewer.”

An unreadable kind of recognition dawns in her eyes, and it fills Patrick with a nauseating mix of both hope and terror. David has definitely mentioned him. But who knows what he’s told her.

“Stay there,” she says, putting the receiver back down and coming around the desk to point at a threadbare sofa. Patrick dutifully plants himself precisely on the indicated cushion. “If you even open this door before I come back, I will tell him I caught you trying to burn down the room with all his sweaters in it.”

Patrick doesn’t smile at that, but god does he want to. Even here, David has managed to commandeer an entire room just for his clothes, and it solidifies the knowledge that he’s here. He’s really here, just a few walls between them, and after two long years apart, Patrick is finally going to get to see him again.

If David wants to see him.

“Understood,” he tells her—Stevie, according to her nametag—and after a long, penetrating look, she disappears out the door, closing it firmly behind her.

Minutes tick by, slow and interminable, and Patrick resists the urge to get up and look around the room just to pass the time. There’s a whole rack of pamphlets he could read as a distraction, but he doesn’t want Stevie to return and find him anywhere but where she told him to be.

When the door finally opens again, his heart climbs into his throat, but it’s just Stevie, alone, with no sign of David or any other Roses trailing behind her. She takes her time getting settled behind the desk again, the tilted corner of her mouth telling him just how much she’s enjoying keeping him on the hook. Finally, once her chair has been adjusted and readjusted to the perfect height and the papers in the filing tray have been straightened and Patrick is nearly vibrating out of his skin with curiosity, she says, “He wants five minutes to make himself presentable. But if you know David at all, you’ll give him at least fifteen,” and Patrick melts back into the sofa with relief.

David has agreed to see him. Even with the way they left things and everything that’s happened since, there’s still hope, glowing like embers under a thick blanket of ash, that they can make this work. Patrick slips his hand into his coat pocket, feeling out the reassuring shape of the ring box there, letting the comfort of it carry him through the remaining fourteen minutes and thirty-two seconds of his wait.

Finally, Stevie clears her throat. “Room Seven. Don’t break his heart again.”

“I won’t.”

His stomach does approximately 683 flips as he leaves the office and walks down to where a black _7_ hangs on a chipped and faded door. He can hear voices from the other side, not the exact shape of the words but the rise and fall of them, as familiar to him as the beat of his own heart. They’re bickering, David and Alexis, and Patrick could cry at how much he’s missed the sound of it. He listens to it for a few seconds more, savoring it, before he lifts his hand and knocks and both voices fade away.

The seconds it takes for David to answer the door are longer than the wait in the office, longer than the whole drive here, but then David’s there, designer sweater, ripped jeans, not a single hair out of place, whole and real if not necessarily happy. There are lines on his face that weren’t there the last time Patrick saw him and the lingering hint of dark circles under his eyes, but even so, he’s as breathtaking as ever, and with the light of the room wrapping around him, Patrick thinks there should probably be a host of angels singing somewhere overhead. _Gloria in excelsis deo_ indeed.

“Hi,” he manages, once he’s pretty sure David isn’t going to slam the door in his face.

David steps out of the room, and Patrick catches a fluttering wink from Alexis as he closes the door behind him. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see you.” 

“Why?” 

David’s hands are curled up inside his sleeves, and it’s the only thing that stops Patrick from reaching for him and answering the question with more than words. 

“Is there somewhere we can talk?” he asks instead, looking up and down the length of the motel for a bench or maybe a gazebo, anywhere that they can have this conversation except right outside a door where Alexis is surely listening on the other side. As nostalgic of a feeling as it is, privacy is probably the more important concern.

David sighs and leads him down around the corner of the building, to a picnic table in the grass. Patrick climbs up to sit on the tabletop, his feet resting on the bench, but David doesn’t join him, leaning back against the side of the building instead, with his arms wrapped protectively around himself. 

It’s so like the night Patrick came here to correct that he starts to shake under the weight of the memory. It was the worst night of his life, and for all that he’s tried to make the best of things, it’s clear that he’s still trapped there, they both are, in David’s bedroom, hearts breaking again and again and again.

“You wanted to talk,” David says, carefully plain, and Patrick hates himself for being the one to ever make David sound like that.

The ring box is burning a hole in his pocket, but looking at David, looking at his own hands trembling in the fading, purpled light, he knows this isn’t the time. A ring would only be a bandage at best, and these wounds are so much wider than a bandage can fix.

“I’m sorry,” he starts. “I know I said it that night, but it’s still true. I’ve been sorry every single day of the last two years.”

David doesn’t respond, but he shifts, just a little, his posture opening up the tiniest bit, and Patrick takes it as a sign to go on.

“I know you, David. Sometimes I think I know you better than I know myself.” David rolls his eyes, but there’s a hint of that old fondness in it, and Patrick’s heart beats faster. “But that doesn’t mean I have any right to tell you what you should want. I thought you were miserable in New York.” He shakes his head at himself. “But whether you were or you weren’t, whether you wanted to leave or not, that wasn’t my choice to make. For all the years I spent asking questions about your dream life, I didn’t ask enough when it actually mattered.”

There’s the sound of a door closing, somewhere around the front side of the motel, and they both listen to the footsteps that follow. After a moment there’s the creak of a car door and the crunch of tires on gravel and, eventually, nothing but ringing silence churning between them like a storm-battered sea. 

David digs the toe of one of his high-tops into the brown and brittle grass. “Do you think this was a punishment?” he asks, so quiet Patrick can barely make out the words.

“What?”

“This.” He shrugs, freeing a hand to gesture vaguely around them. “Maybe it happened because I turned you down that night.”

“David.”

“Maybe fate or, I don’t know, the universe or whatever tried to give me something good for once, and I said no, so they punished me with this.” There are tears shining on his cheeks, and Patrick has to tuck his hands between his thighs to fight the urge to get up and wipe them away.

“None of this is your fault.”

David breathes out a single, bitter laugh. “I was,” he says, and Patrick shakes his head, not following. “Miserable in New York.”

“I still should have asked what you wanted.”

He knows that this isn’t David’s punishment, but maybe it’s Patrick’s, having to sit here and watch the love of his life cry knowing that it’s his own fault, knowing he hasn’t earned back the right to be the one to comfort him.

David brushes at the tears on his face and visibly makes an effort to pull himself together. He pushes himself away from the motel wall and pulls himself up straight. “Ask me,” he says, his voice only trembling a little.

“Ask you what?”

“Ask me what I want.”

Patrick’s breath draws in sharply. It’s a request that puts his fate in his own hands. If he’s serious about this apology—and of course he is—he has to ask, and he has to respect whatever David’s answer is, even if it’s that he wants to never see Patrick again. This could be the actual end of it all. 

He takes a long look at David, trying to memorize the impossible lines of him, just in case, and then he asks.

“David, what do you want?”

“I want you to take me to dinner.”

Patrick couldn’t possibly have heard that right. “What?”

“I want you to take me to dinner,” David says again. “And then I want you to take me to bed. And I want you to spend the night trying to make up for making me sleep alone for the last two years.” He’s crying again, but so is Patrick. “And in the morning, you can ask me again, and I’ll ask you, and we can go from there.”

It’s more than he could have possibly hoped for when this conversation began, and Patrick is off the table and pulling David into his arms just a heartbeat later, his hands slipping around David’s back and into the places that feel like they were made just for him. “Can I kiss you?” he asks, wanting to be sure.

“You fucking better.”

And when they close the distance between them, they’re both laughing, and it doesn’t feel like fate this time; it feels like a choice, and Patrick hopes it’s one they’ll make again and again and again.

🎄 _**December 2016**_ 🎄

Who decides on Christmas Eve that they want to throw a party?

His dad, apparently, and David grumbles about it the entire time he and Stevie are in Christmas World, picking through the half-empty shelves to find semi-acceptable decorations. At the very least, bitching about it distracts him from thinking about how this store could have been his. Patrick had helped him put together a business plan and everything, and then his own mother, Judas Iscariot of rural Ontario, had cast the deciding vote that had turned this space into a gaudy, soulless, corporate holiday shop instead of the carefully curated, locally sourced general store he’d envisioned.

The worst part of this last-minute party planning, however, isn’t the forced patronization of a store that’s very existence sent him into a three-month depressive episode. It’s that Patrick can’t make it on such short notice. The rotating Christmas hosting duties had fallen to one of the Alberta branches of the Brewer tree this year, so he’s already on his way to Calgary with his parents. They have plans to spend New Year’s Eve together, and that’s more than fine, but because of his dad’s sudden burst of holiday spirit, this will be the first Christmas party in years that David’s had to attend without Patrick to get him through it.

Stevie will do in a pinch though, he supposes.

Despite a snafu with the tree, everything comes together in time for the first guests to arrive, and David has to admit that it’s nice to see these rooms so full of joy. It’s nothing like the parties they used to have—the employee ones or the fancier ones for all his parents’ friends—but he thinks it might be better for it.

Even though he knows better, every time there’s a knock at the door, David finds himself looking anyway, hoping to see a familiar pair of honey-brown eyes looking back.

“Hey,” Alexis says, handing him a fresh glass of zhampagne, “remember that year we snuck out of the employee party and went to Klair’s instead, and Jitney spilled a cosmo all over her dress?”

“And then Klair kicked everyone out so we ended up at that 24-hour diner eating pancakes at 3 a.m.” That was a good night, even without Patrick, and David appreciates the reminder, despite the fact that it comes with Alexis’s overly solicitous smile.

There’s another knock on the door, and this time David manages to ignore it, letting himself get sucked into a conversation with Ronnie and Twyla about the new bookstore that just opened in Elmdale. He’s lamenting their incorrect shelving of cookbooks in the self-help section when Stevie tugs at his elbow.

“It’s for you,” she says, taking the glass from his hand and nodding toward the door.

He doesn’t run—he would never admit to that—but he walks very quickly across the few feet that separate him from the door, throwing it wide to find… no one.

There’s no one there.

He looks left. Right. Up. Dow—

Starting at the foot of the door and leading down past Room Ten, there’s an unbroken line of pencils. David bends down and picks up the first one. It’s blue. 

A blue colored pencil.

He glances back into the room behind him to find Alexis and Stevie watching him with matching, far-too-knowing grins, and his heart pounds against his ribs as he steps out into the night and follows the trail around the side of the motel. He expects it to lead to the picnic table where they’d made up last year with Patrick there waiting to surprise him, but when he reaches the grass, there’s no one there. Just more pencils, curving around to the back of the motel. His curiosity only grows.

As he steps around the back corner, he gasps.

There’s a structure there made out of cardboard, like a child’s playhouse but just tall enough for an adult to fit inside. It has two wide windows drawn on the front and a door cut open right in the center. Christmas lights outline the high stretch of space where a sign would go, the words _Rose Apothecary_ written across the center.

He steps carefully inside, looking around at a cardboard version of his dream come to life. The shelves are mostly drawn onto the walls, but there’s a center display table made of boxes and a counter, too, with a smaller box on top for a cash register. And something that looks like maybe it’s supposed to be a refrigerator set off to the side. David trails his fingers across the surfaces, tracing the stained glass panels drawn above the back shelves and the tiny little boxes scattered across the center display with the words _Rose Apothecary, handmade, luxury goods_ written on each one. He picks one up and discovers it even has a price tag stuck to it. It says _expensive_ , but the word is crossed out and _exclusive_ is written under it instead. It’s an echo of a conversation from so long ago he can hardly believe Patrick would remember his words so precisely to be able to recreate them here in this playhouse scene.

Not everything inside is cardboard. There are cream-colored, knitted blankets tucked under the table, brand new, though they look just like the ones they’d kept in the linen closet at home. There’s hot cocoa mix in jars and bottles of massage oil set in neat rows beside the register. In the makeshift fridge, he discovers unsalted Amish butter, fennel goat cheese, and champagne truffles. All of it, every single item has a label indicating that it’s made by someone local; these are exactly the kinds of products he had wanted to sell, and David can’t hold back the tears that have been threatening to spill since he saw the sign over the door.

Because this is his store, so much like he’d imagined it, and it’s filled to the brim with a lifetime of memories shared with Patrick. Hot chocolate in the kitchen, piles of blankets in the screening room, dream life played over and over and over again, thinking none of it could ever really be real. And though he doesn’t know why exactly Patrick has built him this, it gives him the feeling that maybe it could be more than just a dream, someday.

There’s another doorway behind the counter, a piece of fabric stapled across it like a curtain, and David takes a deep breath to steady himself before he pulls it aside. He knows Patrick, and he knows that whatever he’s about to find is probably going to make him cry even more.

And he’s right. Because there, in the middle of what’s drawn like some kind of storage room or maybe a cluttered office, is the table.

Not just any table. The kids’ table. He would recognize the shape of it anywhere, even wrapped in string lights and draped with a tablecloth like it is. And if it’s here, he knows exactly who he’s going to find under it.

It’s still not really made for two grown men to fit underneath, but David does his best to fold himself under it as gracefully as he can, bumping knees with his boyfriend as he gets settled. The warm, white lights glow all around them, sparkling in Patrick’s eyes, and David thinks that maybe he’s slipped into a dream life fantasy somehow.

“Where did you find this?” he asks, tracing his fingers across the place where they’d carved their initials into the bottom of the tabletop with a butter knife long, long ago.

“I went to the estate sale,” Patrick says carefully. It’s surprising, mostly in that Patrick hasn’t mentioned it before now, but he gets why he might be hesitant to bring it up. The thought of all their things being sold off still stings, but not as much as it once did. And he’s glad, he thinks, that Patrick saved this, that there’s a piece of his former life that lives with someone who appreciates it for both the precious and sometimes difficult thing that it was.

He nods to himself. “I’m glad you did.”

“Me, too.” Patrick smiles softly. “Now ask me.”

David does, without hesitation—they’ve gotten a lot better at that over the last year. “What do you want, Patrick?”

“I want to help you build Rose Apothecary.”

He shakes his head, confused. “That’s sweet, but Christmas World—”

“Isn’t renewing their lease.”

“What?”

“They’re moving out next month. And the Town Council has already agreed that the space is yours if you want it.” Patrick’s hand settles on his knee, stroking soothingly across the fabric. It’s a little bit of a nervous habit, something he’s started doing when he isn’t sure how a conversation is going to go. Right now, it’s exactly what David needs, too, to keep him from floating away on all these surprises. Christmas World is leaving. He can still build his store. Patrick wants to help him. “But only if you want it,” Patrick adds. “Nothing is signed or anything. I didn’t make any decisions for you, just… paved the way for you to be able to choose.”

“Patrick,” David breathes. 

And then he kisses him and kisses him and kisses him.

It’s a gift unlike any other. If there’s anyone who could somehow make even part of David’s dream life a reality, it’s the man sitting across from him, and there’s only one way that David would be okay with letting him try.

“Ask me,” he says.

“David, what do you want?”

“I want to build Rose Apothecary.” He takes Patrick’s hands. “But only if you’ll be my business partner.”

The smile Patrick gives him in return is very sweet but almost shy. There’s something else. Something more.

“What?”

“I, um”—he chuckles—“I was actually hoping that…” His right hand slips free of David’s grasp and into his jacket pocket. When it emerges again, he’s holding a black velvet box. “Maybe I could be more than just your _business_ partner.”

David opens the lid with shaking fingers to find four, wide, gold bands nestled inside, and the tears start up all over again. “Are you asking what I think you’re asking?”

“I’ve loved you since I was four-years-old,” Patrick answers, his voice breaking. “I know it wasn’t always in the way you needed me to, but it has always, always been with everything I have. I want to spend the rest of my life loving you just the same. David, will you marry me?”

“Yes!” He drops the ring box between them in favor of getting his arms around Patrick and dragging him in for a messy kiss. “I want that,” he says between presses of his lips. “Yes, Patrick. Yes.”

Patrick laughs as he drags himself away from David’s mouth, fumbling between them for the box so that he can put the rings on David’s fingers, glittering in the lights like fresh Christmas snow. 

David knows that there will be all kinds of logistics and realities to figure out in the light of day and questions neither of them yet has answers for, but for tonight, there’s a Christmas party to avoid, so he lies down next to Patrick under the table where they first met and lets himself dream.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr as [wild-aloof-rebel](http://wild-aloof-rebel.tumblr.com) (my Schitt's Creek blog) or [hudders-and-hiddles](http://hudders-and-hiddles.tumblr.com) (my main).


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